Permutable AI Founder Wilson Chan Warns of a 2026 "Accountability Wave" as Fintech Enters Its Most Regulated AI Era Yet

London, UK, 12 November 2025 - The fintech sector is heading into a pivotal year in 2026 as artificial intelligence evolves from experimental tool to regulated infrastructure. Wilson Chan, Founder and CEO of Permutable AI, is urging the industry to prepare for a decisive shift in expectations - from rapid innovation to demonstrable trust, explainability, and governance.

According to Chan, 2026 will mark a structural turning point for AI adoption across financial markets. "If the past two years were about AI enthusiasm, 2026 will be about accountability," said Chan. "We're moving into an environment where it won't be enough to show that AI works - firms will need to prove how it works, why it behaves the way it does, and whether its outputs can be trusted."

Chan points to a quiet but profound shift in the regulatory landscape. The incoming EU AI Act and expanding FCA expectations around model explainability, governance, and auditability are set to redefine how fintechs build and maintain AI systems.

"This is the silent regulatory wave most companies are not ready for," Chan warned. "AI models will need to carry full audit trails, versioning, and evidence of reasoning. Regulators - and clients - will demand transparency that many systems simply can't provide today."

Permutable AI has engineered around that standard from the outset. Its Trading Co-Pilot intelligence platform embeds reasoning traceability by design, ensuring every insight can be explained, verified, and audited in real time.

Chan also called on fintech leaders to rethink their technology strategies as the industry matures.

"The real differentiator isn't just speed - it's depth of insight," he said. "Founders should own anything that shapes their intellectual edge: data logic, reasoning frameworks, and signal generation. Infrastructure can be outsourced. Intelligence cannot."

According to Chan, 2025 has been the year that institutions moved from experimentation to operational deployment of AI. Adaptive systems are now being embedded directly into trading, risk, and research pipelines.

"AI has moved from the lab to the balance sheet," he added. "The question has shifted from 'what can AI do?' to 'how do we deploy this safely and explainably?'"

Permutable AI has already addressed this challenge, offering real-time market intelligence, sentiment signals, and explainable insights through institutional-grade APIs that integrate seamlessly into existing systems.

To prove the practical value of explainable sentiment intelligence, Permutable AI has spent the past year running a live systematic commodities trading strategy driven entirely by its proprietary sentiment data. Now nearing its first full year, the strategy has delivered:

Return: 20.6%

Volatility: 7.3%

Maximum drawdown: 4.4%

Sharpe ratio: 2.85

Correlation to S&P 500: ~12%

"These are real, live results - not back-tests," said Chan. "They demonstrate that transparent, explainable sentiment data is not only measurable but truly actionable."

As AI becomes deeply embedded in financial infrastructure, Chan argues that the winners of the next era will be the firms that can deliver intelligence that institutions can trust.

"Trust is the new competitive advantage," he concluded. "Explainability is no longer optional - it's the licence to operate. The fintech leaders of the next few years will be those who build systems aligned with human reasoning and accountable to real-world scrutiny."

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Press contact: Talya Stone, enquiries@permutable.ai
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Permutable AI is a London-based company pioneering explainable artificial intelligence and real-time market intelligence for institutional investors. Its platform transforms global financial, policy, and geopolitical narratives into actionable, auditable trading signals - enabling portfolio managers, quants, and macro teams to make faster, more informed decisions with transparency and trust.

This release was published on openPR.